  yesterday was supposed to be "stick it to them day" or some bullshit like that... meaning that was the day we were all supposed to not buy gas as a form of protest against high prices. of course there was no possible way for this boycott to work, because either you'd buy gas the day before the boycott or the day after. but i guess there was an email that was being sent around proclaiming the virtues of the boycott and stating that it worked before in canada or some other hick place, but that email is completely bogus. i've received that email twice in the past regarding high gas prices and it's never worked... so i'm telling you all: STOP SENDING THAT EMAIL (especially now that the protest day has passed).
it's a complete and utter hoax; an urban legend if you will. anyhow, i thought this would be a good segue into extolling the virtues of this urlLink site ... it's basically an encyclopedia of all the different urban legends going around and how most of them are in no way true.
but i think the funniest thing about the whole gas price thing is that now it's national news for gas to be over $2 a gallon... when it's almost $2.50 here in LA and it's been over $2 for quite some time. and here's some reasons why gas is so expensive here in cali: --California is the second-biggest gasoline market in the world, outranked only by the United States as a whole. (California alone consumes as much gasoline as all of Japan. ) --All of the state's refineries, running at full capacity, cannot meet California's one million barrels per day consumption, requiring the importation of more expensive product to meet consumer demand. --Since 1996, California has required a cleaner-burning formulation of gasoline which is produced at few refineries outside of California. And with the recent switch of oxygen additives (MTBE to ethanol... which is more expensive), this aspect of the price goes up even more --The four largest oil refiners in California produce almost 80% of the gasoline supply, and the six largest refiners operate about 85% of the retail gasoline outlets. so they control supply and prices... All of this makes California particularly susceptible to price increases whenever the gasoline supply is disrupted due to factors such as crude oil production cuts by OPEC nations or problems that temporarily shut down refineries.
So the only true way to affect gasoline prices is to change our consumption patterns: meaning we should start using public transportation or purchase fewer gas-guzzling vehicles. This is what happened 30 years ago when gas supplies were so low that there were lines in front of gas stations. People could no longer afford those huge gas-guzzling boat cars and instead went to very compact cars... 
